Believe it or not, the premise doesn’t say all that much about anything.

Much like with ideas in general, you can have the coolest one, but if your execution isn’t up to snuff then it’s just going to end up garbage. There is so many different forms a premise can take as it gets worked into a full-fledged story. It doesn’t have to say anything about genre, style, or even what the story is really going to be about. I wrote down a vague premise today, and when I tried expanding upon it for a possible short story I drowned in the sea of possibility.

I don’t get why people tend to judge things based on their premise, or put so much emphasis on it in the first place. “You need to read more than the first chapter to get a good idea of the premise.” Yeah, sure, but if by the first chapter I’m already groaning at the writing style, and all the attempted jokes have fallen flat, then I don’t think it’s ever going to get good regardless of what the premise actually is.